Current weather

Brian Smith is city editor and a reporter for the Peninsula Clarion. He covers local government, health, energy and environment.
He drove the AlCan from Colorado, where he grew up. He graduated from Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colo., in 2009 with a degree in mass communications. He started his career at the Craig Daily Press in Craig, Colo., where he covered government, environment and courts. He previously interned with his hometown newspaper, the Longmont Times-Call in Longmont, Colo., and was the editor of The Criterion, Mesa State’s student newspaper.
He previously worked as a charter boat deckhand out of Seward for two summers during college. Now he fly fishes but rarely catches, will burn a tank of gas aurora-chasing and is learning to appreciate the Alaska way.
Find him here: www.facebook.com/briansmitty

After four months of digesting research and presentations, the Anadromous Fish Habitat Protection Task Force will start the process of forming and shaping recommendations generated by its various members.

Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Mike Navarre has charged the group with recommending changes to the anadromous streams habitat protection expansion ordinance — which was previously passed but not fully implemented — to be further considered by the public, and eventually the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly.

Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Mike Navarre said Tuesday he was taking the first step in considering how the borough might address cases of animal abuse or neglect.

The mayor’s investigation will gather data on what resources and options exist, look at other Alaska boroughs’ costs and problems with abuse and neglect issues in order to mitigate the concerns of residents who have petitioned the borough assembly at several meetings during the last few months.

Many central Kenai Peninsula small businesses owners said they’ve found they can’t directly compete with box stores or online retailers during the holiday shopping months and as a result, have taken up a particular strategy to stay alive.

Adapt.

In many cases, that’s why local retailers are putting their chips on Small Business Saturday — a day-long shopping event designed to compete with the likes of Black Friday, the nation’s busiest shopping day of the year, and Cyber Monday.

State Rep. Mike Chenault said getting North Slope natural gas to market across Alaska remains his top priority heading into another political season.

“In my mind I put it above oil taxes because oil taxes will get worked out,” Chenault said. “My concern is that in-state gas gets put on the back burner somewhere waiting on something else and something else never shows up.

“It is important to me, but we’ll see in the upcoming legislative session how important in-state gas is to the rest of the state.”

When Alaska voters approved Bonding Proposition A in November’s general election, they also gave the thumbs up for $20 million of the $453.5 million package to go toward rehabilitating the Kenai Spur Highway.

However, the project is only loosely defined.

State Sen. Tom Wagoner, R-Kenai, said he wanted $35 million for the project, which would widen the Spur between Kenai and Soldotna in its two-lane portions to four lanes with a turning lane.

Much like fly fishing itself, the art of learning to tie flies requires about five minutes for the basics, but much, much longer to master.

However, beginners and the experienced seem to agree that no matter where a tier is in his or her development, keeping an open mind to learning new techniques and absorbing advice always benefits the end result.

A brown bear sow mauled two Anchorage men setting traps near the Kenai River on Saturday night, sending one to an Anchorage hospital with serious injuries, a wildlife official said.

Jeff Selinger, Alaska Department of Fish and Game area wildlife biologist, said the two men, whose names or ages he could not immediately release, were attacked a half mile upstream of the Kenai Keys on the south — or Funny River — side of the river.

Getting mail while serving in the military is like Christmas every Sunday.

At least that’s how 19-year-old Kenai Central High School graduate and current Navy construction mechanic Adam Agosti feels about it.

Agosti, who attended Friday’s annual Veterans Day assembly at Kalifornsky Beach Elementary, told students he is waiting to be deployed as a member of the Navy’s SeaBees — a group tasked with building and maintaining Afghanistan bases and performing humanitarian efforts.

Riding into a remote Panamanian village on the back of a cattle truck in 2003, Kenai resident MaryJane Mills said she realized the importance and significance of the boxes she was handing out to poor children.

Inside those shoeboxes were gifts, candy, toys and useful items like toothbrushes and combs. But as important was the connection made, she said.